Farmer Paul Gould, with some of his cows
Read more: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Tragedy-bovine-TB-hits-Dorset-dairy-farm-31-calf/story-20928203-detail/story.html#ixzz2yNGW6vxF
The Westcountry farmer who was ready to oversee the roll-out of the badger cull in Dorset until the Government abandoned the plan last week has revealed his dairy herd has just gone down with bovine TB.
Paul Gould told February’s NFU conference he had 220 farmers and landowners ‘ready to go’ with what was then expected to be the third pilot badger cull in England.
Now he has had a positive test on his farm near Gillingham and will have to send 36 heifers for slaughter, 31 of them carrying calves.
Mr Gould said: “I’ve had 36 reactors, including 31 of my in-calf heifer replacements which were due to calve in this year. Let’s be clear about this, this means that pregnant cows will be sent for slaughter.
“Our last TB test was last June and we were completely clear. We’re a small family farm with 160 British Friesian cows. We’ve been a closed herd for 60 years, which means that all the cattle were born and bred on the farm and I don’t want to compromise that by bringing any animals in. We have badger setts on the farm and as far as I’m concerned there’s only one source of infection that this could have come from.
“Losing all these cows in one go is going to have a serious impact on the business. It means we’ll have no replacements at all this year and we’ll lose nearly a quarter of the herd. It will probably take us three years or more just to get back to where we are now. It’s devastating and we don’t know what our next TB test in 60 days will bring.”
NFU President Meurig Raymond, who is due to visit Mr Gould, said: “The terrible situation Paul finds himself in reinforces the need for action to be taken on all fronts to tackle bovine TB. He has done everything he possibly can to stop this disease infecting his herd and yet is still facing losing nearly a quarter of his cows because of the infected badgers living in or around the farm.
“While we’re confident that the pilot culls will deliver a reduction in bovine TB in Somerset and Gloucestershire, farmers in other parts of the country where the disease is rife like Dorset face the despair of continually fighting a losing battle to control it without any means of preventing badgers continually reinfecting their cattle.
“There is little point in increasing regulations on farmers when the disease isn’t being tackled in wildlife. Until we do that reinfection will continue to occur and farmers like Paul will be powerless to protect their businesses. Controlling the spread of the disease is absolutely essential and culling badgers where bovine TB is endemic must play a role in any strategy to deal it.
“The government’s TB eradication strategy highlights the need to control the badger population in areas where TB is rife. The NFU will now be looking at the best ways of rolling out this policy to other areas where farms and farmers are having to deal with the scourge of TB on their farms.”
The bad news for Mr Gould came as Defra Secretary Owen Paterson appeared to underline his continuing commitment to the badger cull in the Government’s strategy report for making Britain TB free. The Secretary of State was apparently forced to postpone the roll-out this year as a result of political pressure from the Liberal Democrats.
In the report, The Strategy for achieving Officially Bovine Tuberculosis Free status for England, Mr Paterson insists there are no alternatives to culling as part of the solution to what he describes as “the most pressing animal health problem in the UK.”
He writes in the introduction: “The strategy will simply not work without addressing the reservoir of TB infection in badgers.” He points out that vaccination, while it has a role to play in TB eradication, does not cure badgers already infected with the disease.
And he adds. “Based on first veterinary principles and supported by modelling, one would expect culling to be more effective than a badger vaccination programme; that is why I have decided to continue the policy of badger culling in endemic areas learning lessons from the pilots of 2013.”
But there was widespread disappointment in livestock farming circles last week when the Government failed to widen the pilot culls to include Dorset, as had been expected. Culling is expected to re-start in Somerset and Gloucestershire in the autumn although no dates have been given.
Mr Paterson reveals the Government is investing more than £24 million in the development of TB vaccines for cattle and badgers but he warns because of the need for large scale field trials and changes in the law a useable cattle vaccine is “many years away”.
On badger vaccination he say in the future an oral badger vaccine “might address some of the deployment issues with an injectable vaccine” but he warns Defra has yet to identify a candidate vaccine to take forward for authorisation. He goes on: “My goal is to move to a position whereby we have the tools to enable us to deploy a targeted approach, identifying and removing only TB-infected badgers at individual or sett level. In the meantime we will not sit on our hands and let the problem get worse.”
Some farmers, however, have complained that by failing to roll-out the badger cull to Dorset, where a company had been established in whose name the licence to cull would have been issued, the Government has done just that.
Mr Gould told the WMN: “By not going ahead with the Dorset cull it is not just us that are affected There are 34 other areas which put in expressions of interest with Natural England for a cull. This delay – if that’s all it is – means they will be backing up behind us.”
Peter Garbutt, chief livestock adviser for the NFU said the way farmers in TB hotspot areas responded to Defra’s TB eradication strategy would inevitably be coloured by the Government’s failure to roll-out the badger cull.
He said: “In your part of the world, in the Westcountry, many farmers believe they are fighting this disease with one arm tied behind their back. For farmers in that situation it’s a real kick in the teeth.”
